


The Coyote and the Hawk

by tsukinobara



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Community: spn_cinema, M/M, damn you spn_cinema
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-24
Updated: 2017-08-24
Packaged: 2018-12-19 13:24:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11898651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsukinobara/pseuds/tsukinobara
Summary: That's the curse the Colonel laid on us – always together, always apart.





	The Coyote and the Hawk

**Author's Note:**

> _Ladyhawke_ au written for spn_cinema. Thanks to dear_tiger for squee, more squee, and finding all my typos.  >.< The Comanche Wars raged on and off from 1836-1875, ending when the last Comanche bands surrendered and went to live on reservations. Jared and Jensen fought under the Colonel in the Red River War (1874-1875), the last major engagement. Fort Future is based in the most scattershot way on Fort Laramie in Wyoming, Fort Defiance in Arizona, and Fort Selden in New Mexico. The Old Farmer's Almanac would have had a year's worth of reasonably accurate weather predictions and astronomical events, and everything I know about solar eclipses I learned from Google.

Jared knows it's time when he hears his own story – garbled, but recognizably his – repeated between two cowboys at a saloon near the railroad station.

“Now they're _cursed_ ,” one man says to the other with evident glee. “Always together, never touching. The only way to break it is to go to her father, the big chief, with one of her feathers and the tip of the wolf's tail, on the night of a full moon.” He lowers his voice, so Jared can barely hear him. “The Comanche Moon. The most powerful moon.” He swallows the rest of his whiskey and points at his friend, adding in a more normal tone of voice, “That's what you get for falling in love with a big man's daughter.”

Jared's eyes flick up towards the ceiling of the saloon, where far overhead, sailing through the blue blue sky, is a hawk. The hawk was never a chief's daughter, was never a Comanche girl. But the hawk is his.

One of the cowboys calls for more whiskey. Jared drains his own glass, stands, pulls on his riding gloves, and walks out. He's far outside town before he whistles, loud and piercing, and watches the hawk spiral down out of the sky. He holds out his arm, his glove reinforced for just this thing, and the hawk settles on the leather, gripping with its claws. Jared lightly strokes its head.

“They're talking about us,” he tells it. It cocks its head and blinks at him. “They're not getting the story right, but it's still us. I think it's time we paid the Colonel a visit, don't you? I'm tired of this.”

The hawk makes a noise that Jared has learned to interpret as agreement and launches itself into the sky again. Jared's horse tosses its head, eager to run now that the land stretches flat and uninhabited in front of them, so he lets it.

He stops just before sunset, stakes the horse, builds a fire, and pitches the tiny canvas tent he got when he joined the Army, insignia faded after years of diligent scrubbing. The hawk lands on his arm. Its beady black eyes close as Jared strokes its feathers, telling it to be careful, whispering that he loves it. It settles on the ridge of the tent as Jared pulls things out of one of his saddlebags – boots, pants, a shirt. A Colt revolver wrapped in an old pillowcase. The horse whickers.

“Shh,” Jared tells it. “He'll be here soon. Be good for him.” The horse tosses its head. Jared grins. “Don't be jealous. You know you're the only horse for me.” He pats the horse on its velvet nose before pulling off his own boots and settling down to watch the sunset.

Ten minutes later a gray coyote streaks away from the little camp, heading for the scrubby trees and whatever little animals lurk among them.

* * *

Jared and his hawk travel their road alone, and have done so for just over two years. He makes friends easily, always has, but his fierce, protective hawk keeps people away. Jared imagines that he can be an intimidating figure all kitted out, six-foot-five and broad-shouldered, Colt revolver at each hip and his rifle over his shoulder, spurs jingling and hat brim covering his face. Once upon a time he wore a uniform with pride and served in a cavalry unit with the US Army, and people moved out of his way as a show of respect. Now he looks like any other gunslinger, like any one of the many former soldiers spreading across the west, working for the railroad or fighting what's left of the Comanche or just trying to make their way in this new, dusty world. Now, if people even bother to get out of his way, it's from politeness (sometimes) or wariness (most of the time).

He doesn't care. Other people's opinions no longer matter to him. Only one opinion matters, and it's an opinion he might never know, because he's unable to speak to the man who could give it to him.

He walks out of a general store in a trading town, supplies slung over both shoulders, to find someone standing in the street aiming a rifle at the sky. Jared looks up, curious, and there's his hawk, flying in wide circles above the town, no doubt waiting for him. The barrel of the rifle tracks it across the cloudy blue.

“Hey!” Jared yells, starting to run just as the man with the rifle pulls the trigger. People in the street turn as the rifle goes off. The hawk dips, its trajectory wavering as it unsteadily flies away. Jared, still running, drops his supplies and punches the man hard in the face. The man staggers, collects himself, and swings his rifle at Jared's head. Jared grabs it and jerks hard enough to yank the man off his feet.

“The hell is wrong with you?” the man yells from the ground. 

Jared drops the man's rifle, suddenly realizing that he just decked a stranger for no apparent reason in the middle of the street in a town where no one knows him and anyone would be justified in dragging him before the sheriff for causing a disturbance. The Colonel could still have his face on wanted posters.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, grabbing his supplies, throwing them across the back of his saddle, climbing on his horse, and galloping off in the direction that he hopes the hawk took.

He's put the town a mile behind him when he comes across someone standing by the side of the road, gently cradling the hawk in both hands. Jared yanks his horse to a stop, slides off, and rushes over.

“Is... is she yours?” the person asks. At a quick glance, Jared would guess boy, maybe sixteen. “She just dropped out of the sky.”

“He,” Jared says. “Yeah.” He holds out his hands and the boy puts the hawk into them. The man with the rifle clipped the wing, but it doesn't look like he did any permanent damage. “Shh,” Jared murmurs to the hawk. “We'll fix it. You'll be fine.” He looks up at the boy, who's standing close enough that he doesn't look like a boy after all, or as young as Jared thought. “How good are you with birds?” he asks.

The girl – because Jared can tell now that she's a she – shrugs. “My dad raised chickens. My grandpa had a falcon.” She gestures to the hawk. “Her wing's broken.”

“His. His name's Jensen. Look, we gotta get off the road. Take my horse. Come on.”

The girl takes the horse's reins and leads it off the road after Jared. He walks gingerly over to a clump of brush and tells the girl to get a shirt out of one of his saddlebags, and when she does he gently wraps the hawk in it. He needs to check the wound and bandage the wing and why weren't they more _careful_? Anywhere there's people, there's bound to be people with guns, and people with guns like to shoot at things that move.

He looks up at the sky, tracking the sun and calculating. They have several hours of daylight left, but he has no friends except for the hawk in his hands, no friends who could come to his assistance. But here's this girl whose help he now needs, this girl who will be surprised out of her skin come sunset, so surprised she might leave. Or she might have heard the stories about him, garbled as they are, and if she can draw a line from him and the hawk to the Colonel....

But what choice does he have?

Jared looks up at the sky again, then the horizon, then the town behind them. If he remembers right, there should be a farmer a few hours west who might let them sleep in his barn as long as they don't disturb his horse.

“Can you ride?” Jared asks the girl. She looks offended. “Is that a yes?” Before she can answer, he puts the bundle of hawk on the ground, grabs the girl, and swings her up onto his saddle.

“Hey!” she cries.

“Take him.” Jared hands her the hawk, then climbs up behind her. He pulls up the reins and gathers them in one hand. The horse makes a noise of protest. “Oh, hush,” Jared tells it. “You've carried worse for longer. You okay?” he asks the girl. She nods. “If you drop my hawk, I'll shoot you and leave you here.”

She nods again. Jared wraps an arm around her to keep her on the horse, tells her to hang on, digs his spurs into the horse's side, and takes off.

The farmer not only lets them stay in his barn, but brings them some food and water and bandages for the hawk's wing. Jared holds it, murmuring to keep it calm. The wound doesn't look as bad as Jared originally thought, but they should still bind the wing, just in case.

The sun has nearly set by the time they're finished, and Jared's skin is starting to itch with tension. He unpacks the extra clothes and boots and unrolls his blanket. The girl stares at the cavalry officer's sword wrapped inside it.

“Don't panic,” Jared tells the girl. “Whatever happens. Don't panic, and don't run. Tell him I have a plan and everything will be okay.”

“What's going to happen?” she asks, more curious than nervous.

“You got a name?”

“Alona.”

“I'm Jared. The horse is Harley and he doesn't like anyone but me, so don't try to ride him.”

“What's going to happen, Jared?” she repeats.

“A curse.” He takes off his boots, pulls his shirt over his head, and goes outside. He's around the other side of the barn when it happens, and he can just hear a gasp of surprise before he dashes away.

* * *

Sunrise brings rain and a cranky farmer.

“Coyote scared my chickens,” he grumps at Jared, when Jared knocks on the door of his cabin to return the tin plate and cup and thank him for the bandages. “Bird's better?”

“Yeah,” Jared says, “thank you. Sorry about the coyote.”

“Why are you sorry? Didn't think it was worth it to wake you up to chase it off. At least it didn't get my birds.”

Jared thanks him again and goes back to the barn, shaking water off himself as he walks inside. Alona hasn't said a word to him all morning, and now she packs things up in silence. Jared notices that the blanket is already rolled up, the sword once more hidden inside it. The hawk is better, its wing healing nicely and its attitude good. It hasn't snapped at him even once in annoyance.

“The farmer said we could stay here until it stopped raining,” Alona says, stopping Jared from putting her on his horse. Then, “He told me what happened.”

“Who?”

“Him. The hawk. Jensen.”

“What did he say?”

“He said you were cursed.”

“How did he look?”

“Annoyed. Hurt. Sad.” She sits on a ragged bale of hay. “He said he misses you. He said he knows you miss him too.”

“How's his arm?”

“It hit him in the shoulder. I told him he got shot. Well, once I stopped panicking.”

“I told you - “

“He was a hawk and then he turned into a man! I saw you turn into a coyote! Of course I panicked!”

“You're okay now.” Jared leans against a stall. The farmer has taken his horse, so it's relatively quiet in the barn. Rain drums on the roof. Jared can hear something dripping.

“I had time to think,” Alona says, her voice calmer. “I talked to Jensen some. He wanted me to sleep but I wanted to know what happened. He told me his side and said you'd tell me yours.” She points an emphatic finger at Jared. “So tell me. I told him I'd help you.”

Jared slides down the stall wall to the floor. “What did he say?”

“That he loves you.”

“He does.” Jared closes his eyes, remembering Jensen in his uniform, sitting on his horse, laughing. “The sword was his. I served in the Comanche Wars under Colonel Jeff Morgan. Jensen was his second-in-command and I was a sharpshooter and we - “ He can't finish.

“I used to know a girl,” Alona says quietly, her voice almost drowned out by the rain. “She had hair like a sunset. We were going to run off together. But her father found out and he, he sent her to Boston. And I had to leave. So I know.”

Jared's head comes up and he stares at her. “You _don't_ know,” he practically spits. “I haven't seen his face or touched him in two years. I _can't_. That's the curse the Colonel laid on us – always together, always apart. But I know how to break it. On a day that's also night, if we stand in front of him, both of us, the curse will break and I'll be able to see him again.” He pushes himself to his feet. “At the next full moon we'll find him. It's the Comanche Moon. A night bright as day.”

“That's still night. It's not the same thing.” Alona looks up at him. Her face brightens. “You need an eclipse.”

“A what?”

“An eclipse. When the moon covers the sun. Night in the middle of the day.”

Jared stares down at her. She looks triumphant.

An eclipse. Night and day, together. But when -

“We need an almanac,” he says to her. “Stay here.”

He slogs back through the rain to the farmer's cabin, but the farmer is out in his fields. Jared hopes the man won't be too disturbed by someone going through his things, but there's no time to find him and ask permission.

There's a farmer's almanac on a shelf with a bible and, oddly, a collection of Shakespeare's plays. Jared pages through the almanac with increasing desperation.

And there it is. Two days from now, a solar eclipse. The moon will pass in front of the sun and night will fall in the middle of the day.

God must love him. God must love Jensen.

And God must be tired of the Colonel.

* * *

The Colonel is still stationed at Fort Future. _How ironic_ , Jared thinks, as he and Alona stop for the night. _Whose future is he guarding?_

They've found a small, abandoned cabin a half day's ride from the fort. According to the farmer's almanac, the eclipse should begin around two in the afternoon, with the moon blocking the sun closer to three. Jared doesn't have a pocket watch and of course there's no clock in the cabin, but he can estimate how far they are from the fort, and he knows that in the afternoon the Colonel likes to conduct an inspection of the troops stationed there. If he can just get inside the yard in time....

The hawk is doing better. Yesterday it rode with Jared and Alona, wing still wrapped, frustration plain on its face. But today it stretched its wings and flew, soaring high in the sky and occasionally diving down to catch a small scurrying thing. Now Jared tells it the plan, but because he's never sure what it can understand, he reminds Alona to repeat his words after the sun has set and the hawk has become a man again.

“Tell him I love him,” Jared adds, unnecessarily.

“You didn't tell me not to panic,” she says, and Jared grins. And then he feels his entire face brighten, realizing that it's been a long time since someone else made him smile. “You're very handsome when you smile,” Alona tells him. “You should do it more often.”

She sounds like his mother might, or his grandmother, were either of them here to tell him to stop scowling. He just grins wider, at the absurdity of her words and the promise they hold.

“After tomorrow I will,” he says. He pulls off his boots and shirt and goes outside, the ritual so ingrained in him that it's unconscious by now. Alona doesn't follow.

A lone gray coyote races across the moonlit desert, paws pounding the grass, ears laid flat against its skull, hunting and howling and calling out a canine warning to a man who is deaf to its words - 

_Get ready. We're coming for you._

* * *

Fort Future is just as Jared remembered, its walls covered in adobe and its gate shut. He can see an American flag inside the yard, flapping in the breeze, and men are audible from behind the walls. He reins in his horse about half a mile away, slides down to the ground, and steps back as Alona jumps off the horse's back. Jared unties the blanket, unrolls it, and hands her Jensen's sword.

“Remember,” he tells her, “stay hidden. You'll know when I need you.” As an afterthought, he rummages around in one of the saddlebags until he finds the spare revolver, unwraps it, checks the chambers, and hands it over as well.

Alona pops out the cylinder, spins it, and snaps it back in place. Jared raises an eyebrow. She shrugs. “I can shoot straight, if you're about to ask.”

“Wasn't going to. Don't use it unless you absolutely have to.” He glances up at the sky. The hawk has been flying behind them, keeping its distance, but now Jared whistles and holds out his arm, and it comes spiraling down out of the growing shadows to perch on his wrist. “Soon,” he murmurs to it. “Maybe half an hour.”

Alona tucks the Colt into her pants, under her shirt, tries unsuccessfully to hide the sword against her side, and strolls towards the fort, veering to the right to walk around it. There's an unguarded entrance in the back, Jared remembers, near the barracks. She should be able to sneak in there.

The hawk makes a curious noise. Jared strokes its head. He looks up at the sky, gets back on his horse – the hawk still clinging to his arm – and heads for the fort.

The moon is starting to crawl across the sun now, biting into its edge, and when Jared knocks on the front gate, demanding to be let in, someone actually answers. The man looks Jared up and down, seems to recognize him, and gets as far as “The Colonel's - “ before Jared digs his heels into his horse's sides and barrels past.

The soldiers are standing to attention while the Colonel strides among them, inspecting his troops. Jared notes that their uniforms and stances are parade-ready, and the men look prepared to ride out in defense of the countryside to destroy any Comanche who might be foolish enough to attack.

The Comanche Wars are over. And yet the Colonel is still preparing for battle.

Well, he's about to get one.

“Halt!” someone yells behind Jared, and the sound of men dropping their rifles into their hands clatters around him. “Dismount!”

Instead Jared throws up his arm, launching the hawk into the sky. Out of the corner of his eye he can see a few men aim their rifles up at it, but then all of his attention is taken by the Colonel.

The Colonel has more gray in his beard than Jared remembers, but his bearing is stiff and proud and he is still every inch the Army commander who led Jared and Jensen and hundreds of soldiers against the intractable Comanche. He's walking towards Jared now, and Jared slides off his horse to meet him.

“Well, well,” the Colonel says. “The sharpshooter. The thief. Have you returned to submit to my justice, for stealing what was mine?”

“He was never yours,” Jared hisses.

“I don't see him. Did he grow tired of his life? Did he leave the hell to which you condemned him?”

Jared barks a laugh. “That's funny,” he says. “He'll be back. You'll see him again.”

“I don't see how.”

“I do.” Jared points at the sky. “Day and night, at the same time. You didn't think I'd figure out you meant an eclipse, did you? I'm not as stupid as I look.”

A soldier standing near enough to hear them snickers. Jared ignores him.

“But you came back,” the Colonel says, words no doubt intended to be cutting diminished somewhat by the tremor in his voice. The shadows are lengthening across the yard, and the sky is growing darker. The Colonel's face tightens under his hat.

“Yes I did,” Jared answers. “People are telling stories about us now. I heard a cowboy mangle it until Jensen was a Comanche chief's daughter, and we had to appear before her father under the Comanche moon. But then someone told me about the eclipse and, well, here I am.”

The soldiers in the yard are silent. The noise and bustle around them grows quiet as people notice the dimming of the sun.

“I don't see him,” the Colonel says.

“Wait.”

Jared doesn't see the hawk either, but he's afraid to look. He has to trust that Alona has snuck into the fort with the sword and that the hawk will reappear in time.

The eclipse is nearly complete. The yard is dark, as if dusk has come early. A halo glimmers around the edges of the moon as it seems to pause in front of the sun. The soldiers murmur among themselves. The Colonel's eyes narrow.

“Arrest him.” He points to Jared. “If you see a hawk, shoot it out of the sky.”

Two soldiers grab Jared from behind.

“STOP.”

They let go. The Colonel actually looks frightened as he stares over Jared's shoulder, and Jared turns.

And there's Jensen, in the clothes that Jared has carried around for him for two years, the cavalry officer's sword hanging against his hip, the spare six-shooter in his hand. Alona is standing off to the side behind him, biting her lip.

“Jensen,” Jared whispers.

“You lose,” Jensen says, his eyes – green eyes, human eyes – fixed on the Colonel. The revolver is steady in his hand. The murmurs around them grow as Jared starts walking towards him. Jared can see Alona more clearly now, her hands clasped in front of her face as if she's praying. Soldiers part around him.

“Look at us,” Jensen says to the Colonel. His voice hardens. “ _Look at us_.”

“Never!” the Colonel cries behind Jared, voice cracking, and something in Jensen's face gives him away so that Jared turns, drawing his six-shooters, the Colt revolvers that carried him through the Comanche Wars and his years with the Army, “US” carved into the grips, representative of a life he left when the Colonel cursed him and Jensen both. He doesn't pause, doesn't even think, just fires twice, and the Colonel falls.

Jared was a sharpshooter, and with a rifle in his hands he was unstoppable. But the Colonel is too close and Jared is too angry, and the Colts will do.

The silence is total. The halo in the sky fades as the moon continues its progression across the face of the sun. Jared turns again. Jensen has holstered his own six-shooter and now takes the revolvers out of Jared's hands.

“It's over,” he whispers, and Jared laughs, and takes Jensen's face in both hands, and kisses him.

* * *

There's a story that cowboys tell sometimes, about two people who fell in love and were cursed for it. _Always together, never touching_ , goes the tale. Sometimes it can be a cautionary tale, sometimes a love story. It depends on who is doing the telling.

Sometimes the story will be told to an audience around a campfire at the far edge of civilization, the flames a tiny light to push back the vast desert darkness. And sometimes the storyteller will add that if his audience would care to look beyond the firelight, a gray coyote and a hawk might be seen, listening.

But were the lovers really condemned to their animal shapes forever, or were they allowed to remain human? The stories persist, in any case, mangled tales of the love they shared and the curse they broke, and the day the moon covered the sun and made it possible for them to be together again.


End file.
